The Fossil Files

Dinosaurs were massive. No cap. They spread all over the world, but how did they cross oceans? In this episode we ask the question: how far could a dinosaur swim? This isn't just an esoteric question, but one that has a big impact on how we try to reconstruct palaeobiogeography of the Mesozoic and how diversification happens. To do so we look at some new fossil finds from Spain and some weird maths based on rare footage of ostriches swimming and how much fat was on a sauropod.  This week's papers are  "Intercontinental evidence of th...

How and when did mammals transition from laying eggs to live birth? The fossil record doesn't typically preserve soft tissues like embryos and placentas making this a tough problem. This week we take a look at two new fossil discoveries that begin to answer the question of mammal evolution, and challenge orthodoxy. A cute baby dicynodont fossil from the Triassic of South Africa is the first mammal to be captured 'in ovo' i.e. inside its egg. Secondly, we discuss a new fossil cynodont from the Triassic of Argentina that might have recorded its growth and birth in its...

New finds in palaeontology are dependent on people getting out in the field and digging up fossils, but are the next generation of palaeontologists getting to do that? Opportunities for fieldwork and fieldwork training have become more expensive, which means students might not be getting the training they need. What happens next? In this week's bonus episode, Susie and Rob discuss the importance of fieldwork and whether the next generation of palaeontologists are facing 'an extinction of experience'. We focus on the views of students and early career researchers and ponder what happens to palaeontology if we focus on...

Sounds play such an important ecological role, but palaeontologists have always had to use their imagination when reconstructing the sound of extinct landscapes: Until now! For the first time a team of scientists have reconstructed the sound of a whole palaeo-community. Using fossil insect wings and some technological approaches to modern animals, the team were able to use physics and AI models to reconstruct the acoustic landscape of a Jurassic forest peppered with the calls of insects. Were the animals avoiding predators or just talking to each other? Listen in and find out.  This week's paper is "R...

The origin of turtles has long been a scientific mystery. Not only do they have super weird things going on with their ribs, head, and teeth, but also its unclear if they were more closely related to birds and crocodiles, or snakes and lizards, or something else. This week we take a deep dive into the origin of turtles, terrapins and tortoises, and the process of "turtleization". New data from the important Permian critter Eunotosaurus of South Africa might have now solved that problem of the question: Where did turtles come from? This weeks's paper is "The...

What happens when fossils that have been faked or 'enhanced' end up being used in scientific studies? Why does it happen? How can we spot them? How do researchers, preparators, publishers and museums deal with it? In this bonus episode Susie and Rob take a look at three nightmarish examples of faked fossils that ended up in the scientific literature, and what happened after they were spotted. Our first story is the discovery that the exceptional soft tissues of a famous Permian reptile had actually been painted on, the second of a dinosaur that had been stitched together from...

As well as tasting good, fruit play a really important role in ecosystems across the world. But when did they evolve? Were dinosaurs eating them and dispersing them? In a fossil files first, we take a look at the evolution of plants, in particular the centuries long mystery of how and when the flowering plants (angiosperms) got going. A newly described site in New Mexico yields large and varied fleshy fossil fruits which upend how we think about Cretaceous ecosystems. The fossil fruits and seeds are orders of magnitude bigger than other Cretaceous fruit, indicating an active role of...

The deep sea environment holds many mysteries but yields hardly any fossils. A new mindblowing finding at the bottom of the Indian ocean challenges the way we think about life in the deep and the nature of palaeontology. In 2023, a Chinese submersible exploring a 6km deep trench found 476 fossil cetaceans. These extinct whale fossils were covered with life forms previously unknown to science, and what's more, the fossils ranged in age from recent to 5 million years old. How did they get there? Why so many? Can fossils really accumulate in the same place for 5 million years, and just…. sit th...

Studying for a PhD is in an important step towards becoming a scientist, but the process of finding and applying for a PhD programme is mysterious and inaccessible. In this bonus episode Susie and Rob discuss some tips and ideas to demystify the process. Is a PhD right for you? How do you find the right supervisor and project? What are universities looking for in your application? What questions are you going to face in the interview? This a preview of our bonus episode, the full episode can be found on our Patreon. For further related content, check out...

Where, when, and how did the animals first appear? The fossil record holds some tantalising insights from well-preserved sites in Canada, Australia, Russia (and Leicester). This week we are joined by Dr Emily Mitchell of the University of Cambridge to discuss how to find these fascinating Ediacaran fossils, what they mean, and how they evolved. Did they move? Were they left-handed? Did they have sex? Where are they hiding? This is a story that includes lasers, school children, lichens, and bees.   The papers discussed this week are "Earliest evidence of behavioural handedness in the Ediacaran motile bilaterian Sp...

The first animals turned up in the Ediacaran as simple frond-like organisms that didn't do much of anything. Why was this Pre-Cambrian 'Avalonian biota' so static and boring for 12-20 million years before animals started diversifying, moving and becoming more complex? This week we look at a new paper that reconstructs the ecology of the early Avalonian biota, in particular their sexual and and asexual reproductions strategies. To try and figure out what kind of sex these organisms were (or weren't) having, we need to do turn to some interesting maths based on their locations of the fossil surface...

Tyrannosaurus rex is perhaps the most famous dinosaur and maybe even the most famous fossil animal. It has long been a source of curiosity as to why is has such small arms though. What could the possible function be? This week we take a look at a new paper has taken a quantitative approach to this age long-thorny problem to investigate the evolutionary changes that might have led to such unusual anatomy. Indeed it happened not just one, but five times in the theropods. Let's find out why and how!   This week's paper is "Drivers a...

Digging up dinosaur fossils is a complicated and unpredictable business. But how does it feel to be one of the scientists on the ground doing the exploring? What can you do when you are in a race to find dinosaur fossils before they are extracted and lost to the black market? In this episode Susie is in the field in Morocco to report the trials and tribulations of the team's dino hunting seasons. She takes us on a journey from exciting new dinosaur finds, disappointing setbacks when their quarry was raided, and their work with the local and national...

The Fossil Files is one year old! Thank you everbody for your support! To mark the occasion, Susie and Rob take a look back at the last year and put together some of their favourite moments to highlight the best of The Fossil Files (so far) The episodes covered are: Episode 10. Fossil Fails: A Precambrian beehive and dinosaurs on the moon (September) Episode 3. Is de-extinction a scam? (July) Episode 6. Where did Pterosaurs come from? (August) Episode 12. Cretaceous zombie ants (October)

400 million years ago, before the rise of forests, the land was covered in mossy carpets, loomed over by weird 8 meter tall columns called Prototaxites. These weird giants have long been thought to be some sort of fungus body, slowly digesting rotting matter. A new paper has taken a detailed look at some well preserved fossils from the Devonian of Scotland and reveals that this enigmatic giant wasn't a fungus, wasn't a plant, wasn't an animal, and wasn't a bacterium... it was something else. This week Susie and Rob take a look at the strange world of the Devonian giant...

Cretaceous oceans have long been accepted as a dangerous place full of massive mosaurs and other predators. Now some new fossils from Japan have upended this with the suggestion that the "top dog" was not any vertebrate, but instead giant octopuses that were far larger than any invertebrates alive today. This has generated a lot of Kraken related headlines (and social media posts), but is everything as it seems? This week Susie and Rob take a look at these claims and ask: were super intelligent giganto-octopuses the top predators in Cretaceous? Get your salt shaker to hand, because you...

Are we alone? For decades a global effort has been made to search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), but have we been looking in the wrong place? A new paper suggests that we should be looking for advanced technological civilizations that had access to coal as this was an important energy rich source enabling industrialisation. In this bonus episode, Susie and Rob take a look at the geological, palaeontolological and evolutionary implications of the seach for coal burning aliens.  This week's paper is "How common are oxygenic photosynthesis and large coal deposits on exoplanets?" by Lincoln Taiz and c...

Smell defines so much of animal's life from finding a mate, to tracking down food sources and avoiding predators. Genetics and behaviour can offer us rich insights for modern organisms, but what about extinct organisms? How did they smell and what was their ecology? This week we take an interesting paper that has found evolutionary links between the endocasts of mammal brains and genetic markers for their 'smellability'. The authors explore how we can use this relationship to infer the smelling habits of sabre toothed cats and giant armadillos, and to reconstruct the evolutionary origins of whales. Get sniffing!<...

Fossilised vomit can provide direct, yet disgusting, evidence of past ecosystems and interactions between long extinct organisms. This week we take a look at "the earliest terrestrial regurgitalite" from the early Permian of Germany. This prehistoric puke helps us to reconstruct who was eating what, including the Dimetrodon, the famous sail-backed synapsid.  This week's paper is "Early Permian terrestrial apex predator regurgitalite indicates opportunistic feeding behaviour" by Arnaud Rebillard and colleagues, published in Scientific Reports in February 2026. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02929-8 Another 'paper' we mention is "Unusual Arrangement of Bones at Ichthyosaur S...

Getting a fossil species named after you is an unsual way to acheive quasi immortality, especially so for a species of human. In this preview of our second bonus episode we take a look at the weird, and often tragic lives of 5 people who have given their names to species of fossil humans, ranging from mad Austro-Hungarian aristrocrats to rampant imperialists and German pastors. Along the way we ask if we can learn some lessons from this ecletic bunch, and explore the fascinating new science revealing the face of human ancestors. The full episode is available via...